After reading Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons (about which, more later), I have begun re-reading Francois Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel. I have read it three times and parts of it many times.
It is a difficult, strange and wonderful book. But you should read it anyhow. So, just why should you read an obscene, difficult book written by a 16th century French monk/doctor/lawyer?
It is an exuberant, satirical, wonderful, encyclopedic, and, at times, tedious book of sonic thought and riotously inventive language. It is filled with learned disquisitions, and scatalogical lists. It lives up to its name: it is Gargantuan. Rabelais is right up there with Shakespeare and Melville and Joyce. Most of all, this work is filled with a shimmering, laughing love of life.
/jack
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